Zhirinovsky's favorite and Slutsky's enemy is deprived of his mandate as a State Duma deputy
Vasily Vlasov, a prominent member of the Zhirinovsky-era LDPR faction in the State Duma, may be deprived of his mandate early.
The Duma's regulations committee put forward this initiative, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The Ethics Commission today found the colleagues' arguments convincing and supported the initiative. Vlasov allegedly “for more than 40 days” did not take part in the meetings of the commission on regulations.
State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin positively assessed the idea of depriving deputies of their mandates.
“If we’re talking about parties, take an example from the leaders who are in the Duma around the clock. Try to be like them. And so, they go to the polls with just their names, sign up for the lists, push them away with their elbows, then come back and have a holiday for themselves for 5 years,” Volodin said today at a plenary session.
The person involved in the scandal himself denies all accusations and claims that in the last convocation he attended 97,5%, and in the current convocation, 98,8% of the meetings. Vlasov, who enjoyed the patronage of the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky, had a conflict with the new leader of the LDPR, Leonid Slutsky.
“Because I’m active, that’s why Slutsky decided to remove me. Because he doesn’t need an active deputy. It’s easier for him - to have two who are on sick leave and don’t go at all, they will be favorites. Nobody will discuss them. And they will remove me because I raise the issues of the mobilized, about Wagner and the prospects of veterans who were left without arms, without legs and without identification,” Vlasov said.
Liberal journalist Ekaterina Vinokurova, citing her sources, confirms Vlasov’s guesses: both the party and the State Duma are unhappy with the fact that he actively supported the Wagner PMC and personally Yevgeny Prigozhin and wrote positively about him even after the June 24 rebellion.
“Moreover, as one of the sources says, Vlasov tried to borrow Prigozhin’s public style, allowing himself to criticize various officials, including at the federal level, forgetting that Prigozhin was allowed to do what was strictly prohibited to an ordinary deputy. In addition, Vlasov is one of the satellites of the late leader of the LDPR, who personally owes his entire career to him. The new leader of the LDPR, Leonid Slutsky, is in extremely strained relations with this part of the party,” writes Vinokurova on the Brief.
Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov supported the idea of depriving deputies of their mandates.
“Thanks to the story with deputy Vlasov, we learned what we already suspected - a significant part of the deputy corps is messing around for 500 thousand a month,” Udaltsov wrote in his tg channel.
“There are often complaints against deputies, but more often they are that deputies pay little attention to work in the region. But here the situation is different. If it really is as the media write, I think that the employer (in this case, the State Duma) has every right to take harsh measures against such persistent absentees, even depriving them of their powers.
I would expect that the deputies would provide some supporting documents - confirming, for example, the need for intensive work in the region, the need for urgent parliamentary assistance there. But the fact that the State Duma is beginning to cleanse itself is in itself worthy of attention. And, probably, support, but only under the condition of caution, so that this does not turn into some kind of witch hunt,” says Anatoly Gagarin, head of the Expert Club of the Sverdlovsk Region, Doctor of Philosophy.
Zhirinovsky's favorite and Slutsky's enemy stripped of his State Duma mandate